Jonkoping

July 6- Jonkoping
Weather- Mid 60s, mixed sun and some showers

Part of the purpose of this whole trip was to visit the places where Jen and my ancestors emigrated from.  Jen's people are from south-central Sweden, near a town called Jonkoping (Yurns-kurping). So, on our way up to Stockholm and the planned bike tour on Gotland, we stopped off there.  We hopped on the train at Ystad with little difficulty and via a couple transfers, found ourselves in Jonkoping in the afternoon.  Turns out, Sweden is a pretty big country relative to Denmark!

Jonkoping was an interesting place to visit in part because it's not particularly a tourist destination.  It is situated very scenically on the very large Lake Vattern, and does possess a large and pleasant waterfront, but not, relatively, much in the way of hugely interesting historical buildings, museums, etc.  We got an AirBnB place near downtown (this seems a good way to go in Sweden for affordable lodging- you can get a place through this at less than the rate of a room at a hostel, and you generally get privacy, a bathroom, and a kitchen to boot) and then went to walk around the town.  It seems to be a growing area, with lots of construction going on in the waterfront area, and a pleasant mix of new construction and a historical district.  We tried both for food and drinks, and had a very pleasant evening grazing and walking around.

We woke up the next day hoping to hop on the train on our way over to ferry to Gotland via Oskarshamn, but it was much more complicated than we anticipated.  Apparently taking a bike on the train (or bus) was pretty difficult- and if it was possible at all, we would have to pack up the bikes in boxes as if we were flying with them.  This was an unpleasant proposition, made more difficult still by the annoying fact that thieves had rummaged through by bike bag I had stupidly left locked outside and taken many of my tools.  (My own dumb fault, really).  So we decided it would probably be easier to get to Gotland via Stockholm (the ferry also leaves from near Stockholm). Well, it's also apparently impossible to do the unpacked bike to Stockholm, so we took a breath, looked at some options, and found that it was about the same price just to rent a car and go up that way.

This turned out to be kind of fun, in that apparently when you rent a car in Sweden you don't get a factory-basic Taurus,  you get an Audi Quattro TDI.  The wagon fit our bikes perfectly, and we zipped up to Stockholm in near luxury.  After an odd lunch at the roadside chain "Eat" (a Swedish/ Japanese/ Italian buffet, that of course is actually pretty good), we arrived in Stockholm in the late afternoon.  AirBnB came through again, and we secured a pleasant apartment not far from the downtown area.  Making sure to part with the Audi before we put a scratch on the immaculate vehicle, we navigated the wonderful bike path system through the stunningly beautiful downtown to our home for the next 4 days.  We dumped our gear, and hunted out a grocery store around the area we were staying, got a drink at a pleasant pub, and then back to the apartment for a much-needed slumber.